


that heart which now abhors

by lyres



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Theatre, F/F, Non-Chronological, Rivals to Lovers, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23686075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyres/pseuds/lyres
Summary: “The problem for me? Not getting too caught up,” says Grantaire. “Give me a character whose latent depression expresses itself through him being in love with three people at once, and I'll forget that I'm acting before Act I is through. For you,” he points at Éponine, “I suspect it's being a love interest to your nemesis.”(Upon being cast as the lead in Twelfth Night, Éponine grapples with herself, imposter syndrome, and a perhaps slightly imaginary rivalry.)
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 20
Kudos: 98





	that heart which now abhors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tothewillofthepeople](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothewillofthepeople/gifts).



> “Yet come again, for thou perhaps mayst move  
> That heart, which now abhors, to like his love.”  
> – Olivia, _Twelfth Night_ III.1
> 
> I hope this fic still somewhat makes sense if you're not familiar with the plot of Twelfth Night, but it might help to look over a [plot summary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night#Synopsis) first.

**Rehearsals (Day 2)**

Grantaire spins her around with all the care and precision of an avalanche. Éponine stops her spinning abruptly to curtsy before him, a motion that is more difficult to do in a serious than in an ironic way. “On your attendance, my lord.”

“See, look at us, killing it.” Grantaire gestures vaguely between them. “Psh, chemistry. Chemistry was never going to be the problem here.”

He's not – wrong, as such. Éponine drops unceremoniously to the floor next to him. Grantaire can be an unusually reliable scene partner when he's in the mood to be, and she's grateful to be cast alongside someone she knows and trusts. _Likes_ is a different question; _liking_ is never as simple as the word assumes, with Grantaire, but if they have an odd little dance sequence, he won't drop her, and if they have to be ambiguously smitten with one another for ninety minutes, he's constitutionally incapable of taking it too seriously. It's not a bad deal.

“What is going to be the problem, then?”

She watches Grantaire contemplate the question. He's letting stubble grow in for his Orsino, and it does something interesting to his face.

“For me? Not getting too caught up. Give me a character whose latent depression expresses itself through him being in love with three people at once, and I'll forget that I'm acting before Act I is through. For you,” he points, “I suspect it's being a love interest to your nemesis.”

“Oh, God.” It's easy to underestimate Grantaire's qualities as a listener. In the moment, it always seems as if he's paying no attention at all, or at least as if he's certainly too drunk to remember what was said afterwards. She has a feeling he truthfully forgets very little. “Please don't ever bring that up again.”

“Hm. Honestly, though, what do you think of the overall Vision?” He draws an arc into the air with both hands to punctuate the word. “Think you can pull it off?”

Éponine doesn't know. It's as simple as that: she has no idea. She saw Cosette briefly yesterday, but they won't get into the meat of their shared scenes for another week, and the mere thought makes Éponine feel nauseous. If she's going to act against the text – or, in any case, against any reading she's considered before – she'd prefer to do it with someone whose presence on a stage alongside her own _doesn't_ hopelessly humiliate her. Cosette must be aware of it. She must be. Éponine can't imagine anyone she'll be less of a heroine next to.

“Up to her,” she says with a shrug. “And anyway, isn't ambiguity what we want? Perhaps I'm really in love with you, as I claim to be.”

“Ah! I should be so lucky.” Grantaire clutches his chest with relish, but there's always an odd edge to it when he laughs. “Really, I think I'm more of an Antonio after all.”

Éponine decides to let sleeping dogs lie.

**Second Show Day (7 minutes to Viola's cue in Act III, Scene 4)**

It's an almost secret space, the nook next to the lighting booth. At some point in history, it will have served a purpose: additional prop storage, or a space to stash wires or electrics. Now, it fits Éponine. She's always been good at this, finding places to hide. Drop her in a hospital, a university campus, a city mall, and she'll sniff out a space to be alone before thirty minutes are out. (A place to sleep, even. She still knows how to do that.)

It's never occurred to her that this might be a talent she shares with people. Enjolras finds her anyway. There is no knock, but a creak, and warm light that falls onto the wood before her. A pause – a breath out. The door closes again, and she can tell he hasn't left.

She's not shaking anymore, else he'd probably have picked her up and delivered her to Combeferre in a heartbeat, but the clamour in her head hasn't stopped. Enjolras sits across from her, long legs folded elaborately before him. For a moment, it feels like looking in a mirror: his hair stuck at half-length, the soft lines of his lips, the long lashes that seem to defy the sharp angles of his face, all refusing to commit to one or the other side of attractive. With her face on, she must look a little like him.

Perhaps he should have been Viola to Feuilly's Sebastian.

“Do you want to stop?”

She reaches to touch her cheek. It's odd: she hasn't cried. A shame it would have been, anyway, to ruin Cesario's contour in the middle of the play. Her mess of a mind seems aware of that, at least.

“I wouldn't,” she says. Then, “The show shouldn't suffer because of me.”

“Sod the show,” says Enjolras, and she stares at him with wide eyes in the half-dark. “Or, well, sod tonight. I can talk to Combeferre.”

“No.” She doesn't have to be back on for another while. They're stretching Sir Toby's part out with a musical number. Bahorel likes to sing, badly.

“Okay,” he says. He shifts; the space isn't made for two, an important criterion for her when she chose it. “Can I sit here with you?”

She's never seen him like this, quiet and absurdly patient. In her mind, Enjolras is never seen without a clipboard and an aggressively pointed tone, a spring always coiled to go for the jugular of the next best shady advertisement deal. A dream of a production manager, and entirely too reasonable to be a good friend. But then, a reasonable person would drag her out of here and straight to the spot of her next entrance.

Seven minutes to go.

She nods.

**Rehearsals (Day 6)**

Éponine knows she's not here on merit. It is a play to be cast more than others by appearance, and the first time Éponine saw Feuilly, the reasoning behind herself as the lead made perfect sense. With her hair cropped close, they are of a height, of a similar colouring, they have the same angular shoulders and odd dusting of freckles on brown skin: as it is, they might pass for siblings even without make-up.

The whole thing must be killing Cosette. Or perhaps it's welcome instead – surely, if she must be edged out of the position as romantic heroine for once, it's a comfort to know the decision was made out of little more than tokenism.

Feuilly is grounded, careful, easy to talk to. His calm is a welcome change from Grantaire's alternating spikes and drags of energy. If he feels similarly misplaced as she does, he doesn't let it show. In the quiet room they were unceremoniously ushered into by Combeferre, he raises a hand to mirror hers as she puts fingers to her temple for what feels like the fifteenth time today.

“Do I really do it that much?”

“Enough to stand out.” Feuilly smiles, and it looks a little tortured. “Sorry. The scrutiny's weird, isn't it? Maybe we should just make up new mannerisms.”

Combeferre is methodical. He makes sure to give close instructions, and he pays attention without being overbearing, but he's also somewhat removed from the practicalities of acting. Éponine wonders if he's ever sat in a room with a stranger and tried to become forcefully familiar with their quirks.

They play the mirror game for a little while; she begins by leading, and they fall rather quickly into a space where it's impossible to say who first suggested a movement. It's like shifting the tile on a ouija board: something outside of them, ephemeral and not meant to be traced, predicts the other's movements for them. Twin puppets, thinks Éponine as she bends her left wrist downwards as Feuilly bends his. Combeferre would love this.

Afterwards, they run what few lines they share – Éponine reads Sebastian's, Feuilly Viola's. It was Combeferre's suggestion for a reconciliation, having them swap roles in the final scene. His discomfort with the text isn't visible anymore, that has mostly been beaten out by their staging, and Éponine won't pretend she's not grateful for the changes they've made. (For one, they save her from having to kiss Grantaire. Not a reservation that should matter in her field, but hell, she's not even a professional yet. Feuilly, for his part, doesn't seem to mind.)

“It's interesting, this,” says Feuilly. He taps Antonio's line. “ _An apple, cleft in two, is not more twin / Than these two creatures_. Weirdly – literal, as far as twins are concerned.”

“I suppose.” Éponine thinks of her earlier lines, meant to hedge more than they're meant to link her even closer to Sebastian, but still: _I am all the sisters of my father's house, and all the brothers too_. “You'd almost think he's alluding to monozygotism on purpose. I'm horrified to even imagine early modern scientific takes on how twins happen.”

“It's so accidentally on point. For a different reason, I guess, because from Antonio's perspective, it's just that we look the same. But for the two of us – to us, it's this outside admission of a closeness that we know is real. We know each other like ourselves; we feel like one person.”

Éponine has a drink of water to stall for time. “Do you have siblings?” she asks, a little late considering they've been in here for two hours tasked with getting to know one another for the specific purpose of playing twins.

Feuilly shakes his head. “The occasional foster brother or sister, but I never stuck around anywhere for long. Do you?”

“Four,” says Éponine after a moment. It's strange: not once while preparing for the role so far has it occurred to her to draw from that. Feuilly whistles.

“Four, wow. I suppose that kills any chance at feeling like parts of the same whole stone dead.”

 _No_ , thinks Éponine. _No, it doesn't_. “A little,” she says.

**Second Show Day (5 minutes to Viola's cue in Act III, Scene 4)**

Enjolras hasn't said anything. She can't imagine he's not needed elsewhere, but then, so is she. She's never even come close to missing a cue before, and never would, she thinks, by accident. This, however, is on purpose, and feels accordingly. It's like barrelling at full speed towards a cliff's edge, headfirst and fully conscious.

They do have a cover for her. It's a programme for the year below them – learn the same lines while learning from upper year students. Her cover is a quiet, pointy sort of girl, cool and ambitious. Éponine liked what she saw of her. She doesn't want to say this to Enjolras, because in spite of herself, she'd flinch at his agreement that the show might be better off with a different Viola.

One who doesn't fudge her way through the central monologue, for one. Yesterday was a nightmare.

“About yesterday,” says Enjolras, who never misses a cue. “Did you and Cosette talk about it?”

“ _What?_ ”

It comes out sharper than she means, the single word a lash. Enjolras raises an eyebrow.

“Her trip-up in Three-One. I know it can be stressful to feel like you're holding up someone else.”

Her sigh of relief comes out as a huff of disbelief. “Holding her up? She's never needed holding up in her life. You've seen us; you know she carries our scenes on her back. Next to her, you could swap out Viola with a broomstick and be just fine.”

The vitriol in her own voice makes her feel ill. Enjolras's eyes are wide with surprise. No one ever expects her to be vicious.

She closes her eyes to it – Enjolras's confusion, the envy that twists her insides, Cosette's careful gratitude, all of it.

She's going to miss her cue.

**Rehearsals (Day 15)**

“I want you to remember what it is you understand about one another.” Combeferre is holding his script in one and his phone in the other hand: for a stage manager, he's remarkably directive. “The bare text doesn't give Viola any other reason to refuse Olivia than the fact that she isn't a man; it also gives very little reason for Viola to love Orsino other than the fact that she is a woman. It falls on you to bring to life her motivations and depth beyond that.” He looks at Éponine. “What is Viola?”

“Lonely,” says Éponine. “She can't be honest with anyone, and she's grieving for a brother. She's isolated.”

Cosette looks at her over her script. Éponine should have gotten used to it by now, but even after weeks of rehearsal, her prettiness is still unnerving. Next to it, Éponine feels stripped raw. (It's not envy. She thought it was, maybe, at first. But it's not. She doesn't miss her hair; she didn't think twice about clipping it for the role, even when offered the possibility of a wig. Cosette looks like Olivia should, soft and bright, like the sort of girl you could be in love with for years without the smallest measure of encouragement. There exists a past version of Éponine who thought she wanted to look like that, but she must have lost her along the way.)

“Do you think I can tell?” says Cosette. She's careful with her suggestions, always timid enough to avoid seeming nitpicky. “A little bit?”

“Well, we have more in common than the text allows us to say.” Éponine lowers her eyes to her script without reading. “But I know you're in mourning, like me, and I can see that you're beautiful. That's why it's easy to say the right thing, and that's – that's a connection, right?”

“Certainly is to me.” Cosette smiles at the words on the page. “ _Make me a willow cabin at your gate_ – I'm yours before the end of that.”

“Wonderful.” Combeferre puts down his script, a sign that he thinks he has all he needs. “Understanding, comfort, some kindness; like you know that she's not so much proud as she's grieving. Don't be afraid to come close; you are wooing her, by proxy or not.” He gestures vaguely. “From 'How does he love me', I think.”

Acting alongside Cosette isn't what Éponine thought it would be. She's always assumed it would feel like being cornered – being, as Grantaire puts it, acted against with your back to the wall. Cosette has a stage presence like few people Éponine knows. It's strange to find that this presence isn't oppressive, and neither is it imposing: she feels held up by it. It's easy to trust her, even when, like Éponine, one has to be dragged into trust kicking and screaming. Cosette keeps eye contact like she means it, and disappears comfortably into her role. Whenever Éponine tries to immerse herself the same way, she feels like there are still bits sticking out, easily pointed or prodded at by a director (or worse, an audience).

This makes her want to, though. To try.

She keeps her eyes as much as she can off the script. This part is easily memorised, and only works with eye contact. “If I did love you in my master's flame, with such a suffering, such a deadly life –” She lets the line hang there, deliberate and careful, like she's caught herself understanding her master a shade too well. The minutest shake of her head, then, “In your denial I would find no sense. I would not understand it.”

Cosette has picked up on it. Her smile is a slow, bright thing. “Why, what would you?”

Éponine likes the little monologue; she was drawn to it before _Twelfth Night_ became their play for the semester. Deception or not, there's a sweetness to it, and it's nice to try to bring it to life as she speaks. Cosette has a way of making her acted responses inspire genuine pride. Éponine watches her, all startled and pleased, before she says, tearing her eyes away, “O, you should not rest between the elements of air and earth, but you should pity me.”

“You might do much,” says Cosette. She steps back – Éponine had moved towards her, never pressing, mildly desperate, but having brought an inch more of distance between them, Cosette reaches out and rests a finger against Éponine's cheek. With minimal effort, she draws Éponine's head slightly to the side, enough that Éponine cannot look at her as she is being looked at. “What is your parentage?”

“Above my fortunes, yet my state is well.” Éponine can speak, but not move. She keeps still, frozen in place. “I am a gentleman.”

“Hm.” Cosette's finger runs a gentle trace from her cheek downwards, where she brushes her thumb against Éponine's chin just enough to imitate a small, possessive gesture. She lets go, then, abrupt and decisive, and steps further back. “Get you to your lord; I cannot love him. Let him send no more.”

Éponine, who stumbled a little, comes to just in time to pick up her lines again. Never has the confused exasperation of her exit come easier to her – it is an unsettlingly natural thing to act. She ends on “Farewell, fair cruelty,” and thinks _If only_.

For a moment after, no one in the room speaks. Outside, Enjolras is shouting into his phone.

Combeferre, when Éponine instinctively looks at him for notes, is blinking quietly at them. He clears his throat and picks his script back up. “Well,” he says. “I'd say we've found our angle.”

**Second Show Day (2 minutes to Viola's cue in Act III, Scene 4)**

She hears it through Enjolras's headset – _Anyone eyes on Viola?_ – and opens her eyes.

“God. Okay. Sorry.” Enough of this. She's been ungrateful, bitter, and irresponsible throughout this; she does not need to add selfishness to the long list of reasons she's given them never to cast her as a lead again. “I – I'll be down.” In a moment, she wants to say, but they don't have a moment, so she says nothing. Enjolras's eyes have been on her the entire time, heavy, but not judging. He's much stranger than she thought. Much more likeable, too.

_Where the hell is Éponine?_

Enjolras pulls off the headset with an eyeroll.

“It's a balance,” he says after a pause, unprompted. “You and her. It's not about each of you individually, it's about both of you together. On stage, you can feel everyone looking, and you think it's all for her. It's not.” Looking entirely serious, not a hint of a smile on his face, he extends a hand. “Onwards, good Cesario?”

It lifts a weight off her chest, one she didn't know was pinning her in place. She takes his hand. After a brief look at one another, they scramble for the door, sprinting down the narrow stairs, half tripping over their own feet.

She makes her cue with a ten second delay, in which Bahorel heroically bridges the gap by repeating “Like cockatrices” with such fervour that their Fabian corpses hopelessly. Cosette was standing by the door when Éponine barrelled down, Enjolras in tow, and smoothed over her own look of concern within half a second.

Éponine has never so desperately wanted the time to apologise to someone.

Cosette gives them a beat – they size each other up, assume their positions – and Éponine follows Cosette onto the stage, seemingly mid-argument.

“I have said too much unto a heart of stone,” says Cosette, with hurt in her voice that chills Éponine, “and laid mine honour too unchary out: There's something in me that reproves my fault; but such a headstrong, potent fault it is, that it but mocks reproof.”

In rehearsals, they've worked out a way for Éponine to say her lines in this scene as if they break her heart: she is supposed to sound mechanical, on the more tragic edge of practised. It takes no effort out of her. To disappear into a role is one thing, to meld with it another. “With the same 'havior that your passion bears goes on my master's grief.”

The pause that follows is intended, but it feels anxious nonetheless. When Cosette steps towards her, unhappily resolved, Éponine lets herself be drawn in as if into a planet's orbit.

“Here, wear this jewel for me,” says Cosette. “Refuse it not; it hath no tongue to vex you. What shall you ask of me that I'll deny, that honour saved may upon asking give?”

Cosette's hands have wrapped around hers as she gave her the necklace, warm and dry. As she makes to pull away, now, Éponine holds on to them.

“Nothing but this,” she says. Cosette, before her, looks between her hands, her eyes, her lips. The next words come like something forced up from below the earth. “Your true love for – my master.”

When Cosette pulls herself free, she does it gently. “How, with mine honour, may I give him that which I have given to you?”

The break Éponine has in between scenes, this time, due to her little stunt by the lighting booth didn't leave time for a sip of water. She's sure that's the reason, and in any case, it adds to the immersion, doesn't it, when her voice cracks as she says, “I will acquit you.”

Cosette lifts her chin. Éponine has heard these lines from her over and over during rehearsals, and known in her heart that she could never deliver them in a meaningful way, but Cosette – oh, they were written for Cosette. She could drive someone half mad with those few words. “Well – come again tomorrow. Fare thee well: A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.”

**The Premiere (Act III, Scene 1)**

Éponine stalls when Cosette does. It's always been a difficult scene to get right, the one Combeferre frowned the deepest about during rehearsals, and, without argument, the hardest one to fit into the production's particular reading of the text.

This has never happened. Cosette's footing is always sure.

Éponine's hardest lines for the scene have been spoken, and Cosette is quiet for a beat too long. Up close as they are, Éponine can see the shock in her eyes; more even than Éponine and the audience, she was not expecting to trip up.

They are linked by their hands, Cosette has pressed them both to her chest. It's meant to be a passionate sort of anger, reluctance warring with desire, but the pause of Cosette's mistake has made it tender. Beneath their fingers, the hammering of her heart.

Slowly, towards the direction that will shield her face from the audience, Éponine moves her head, the gentlest inclination of leaning in for a kiss. There's no one in the prompt corner; none of them are wired. She whispers, a breath away from Cosette's lips, “What a deal –”

Cosette pulls away from her, violently and as she is meant to, and the scene clicks into place again. “O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful in the contempt and anger on his lip!” The rhythm of it is easy, as though nothing ever went wrong. Feeling feverish, Éponine wonders how many people noticed. “A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that would seen hid: love's night is noon.”

After curtain calls, Éponine flees to Jehan before anyone can catch her. Her anxiety always has an odd spike right after a show, and she likes to come down from it before getting swept up in everyone else's highs. Jehan, patient and prepared at the dressing room door, helps her unlace.

“Thank you,” murmurs Éponine once she's free of her doublet. She likes these costumes – their concept is a historically disastrous mix of early modern and Victorian elements that would give anyone who knows their fashion a headache – but she asked to be pulled in more tightly around the chest than was comfortable. “Oh, it's good to breathe.”

“Because breathing is so inessential while on stage,” reprimands Jehan gently. “Never let me do that again. Hang on, I'll get something to take off your face.”

“No,” says Éponine without thinking. Jehan spent considerable time on her contour, earlier, and it seems a shame to leave it on only for the length of the play. That, and – “Sorry. It's just – it's good. I think I like this as a post-show look.”

“Cesario,” Jehan takes a small bow, “I can't tell you how proud that makes me. Those slippers, however, I can't allow you to keep.”

The onslaught of celebration is impossible to escape: Grantaire sweeps Éponine along the moment he catches sight of her, and they end up in the bar a few doors down, all-too familiar now from shows of previous years. It's a cosy, living room-ish sort of place, with boardgames and books, and she gets to share a couch with Feuilly as they watch Combeferre waltz with Jehan, and Cosette armwrestle Bahorel, and Grantaire regale Enjolras with some story or other, and it's a good night, all things considered, that passes in a pleasant haze.

Cosette kisses her in the cobblestone street outside the bar. The haze ends, then. Cosette went out for some air, and Éponine, thinking of very little, followed her outside, and Éponine is sure they're just talking about earlier – the split-second of doubt, the rescue, the reassurance – and then Cosette kisses her, and it feels like something entirely different to what they did on stage.

She wants to realign what she knows about Cosette, about herself, to make sense of this, but it's all too much, and too loud: a bell-tower somewhere in the centre chiming for midnight, the scent of powder still clinging to Cosette's hair, some melancholy Pomme song playing in the bar. Cosette looks startled, afterwards, wide-eyed and breathless, and touches stunned fingers to her lips.

It's unbearable. Éponine leaves, as if running from having to comprehend this will make it go away, and dreads the moment when it'll inevitably catch up with her.

**Second Show Day (Post-Curtain Calls)**

As Jehan unlaces her, Éponine reaches for the makeup wipes on the dresser.

“Are you sticking around?” Jehan asks without commenting as she carefully swipes one across her brow. “I hear there's some mischief planned by the covers.”

“I'm dead tired.” It's the truth, and it isn't; she's been desperate to go home since her little stunt earlier. She doesn't want to explain herself to Cosette; she doesn't want to have to thank Bahorel for saving her. “In any case, their mischief's probably better off without me. Will you stay?”

Jehan smiles brightly. “Oh, you know me, never one to skip the mischief.”

“Please tell Bahorel I'm sorry, if you run into him.” She shakes her head at herself. “I'll apologise myself, later, right now I'm just –”

“Good,” says Jehan while pulling her firmly free. “You're good, and you were good. Wonderful, even. I think I fell in love with Cosette by watching you.”

Éponine rubs the last of her make-up off her cheek. Her eyes sting. On her way out of the door, she's stopped, briefly, by a hand to her shoulder.

“I'd love to show you, you know,” says Jehan softly. “How to do the contour. Just – if you want. Anytime you like.”

Something threatens to spill over. Jehan does not deserve to be cried at without warning, so she settles for a hug, brief and tight, before she flees the theatre as clandestinely as she can.

Not clandestine enough, she thinks, when footsteps catch up with her down the street.

“Hey,” says Cosette, out of breath, “hey, I've – you're not staying?”

“Sorry.” Éponine pulls up her shoulders, burrows hands into the pockets of her coat. “I'm sorry about earlier, I just need some rest. It's fine, I'm just – tired.”

“Of course.” Cosette must have rushed out; her cheeks are flushed, her face is still in Olivia's elaborate updo. “Can I walk with you?”

Might as well, thinks Éponine. Perhaps she'll sleep easier with this put to rest.

They walk along the bus route Éponine would usually take, away from the theatre and through the centre towards the cheaper end of town. Cosette is quiet, something which Éponine has learned by now she is never naturally. She's learned other things about Cosette, too, since rehearsals started. Cosette cares about getting things right and not talking over anyone. She cares, more than anything else, about being, doing, giving the best she possibly can, and that best is terrifyingly good – but it doesn't come easy to her.

“I'm sorry, Éponine.” Cosette smiles when Éponine looks at her, but having seen it on stage so many times, Éponine has come to know when a smile takes effort. “There's little enough use to saying it, but it really is unlike me to lose my head the way I did.”

“It's okay.” Éponine stops walking. She doesn't want this conversation taking place any closer to home than it has to. “I understand.”

“You do? I feel like I haven't explained very much.”

“No, I – I think I do.” She worries at her lower lip. “You kissed Cesario.”

After a moment of silence, Cosette squares her shoulders. “No, I didn't.”

“Cosette, please –”

“Why would I kiss Cesario?”

“Why would you kiss _me?_ ” Éponine motions helplessly. “I told myself you were mocking me, at first. During rehearsals. You paid so much attention, you asked for my input, as if you weren't carrying all of this from the beginning, as if we didn't both know the bulk of it rested on you. And then I understood that you weren't mocking me, you just actually are _that_ good and you actually do value the people around you _that_ much, and I don't know how to be in return. I don't know where to put myself around you. I don't know why you –”

“Do you know why this mattered to me?” Cosette doesn't look hurt. The tension in her voice betrays a flare of anger. “I've wanted to act with you since the first week of our first year. Scene study. You chose Medea, do you remember? Because I do. Your monologue gave me chest pains. You stood there with no formal training, four days into drama school, tearing us apart. I had my first elocution lesson when I was ten, Éponine.”

“You did?” It's a silly detail to latch on to, but the fact of the matter is that Éponine has never really thought about Cosette's training before they started here. She doesn't think about anyone's. They're all thrown together now, after all.

“Yes,” says Cosette sharply. “I'm good, I know. I've tried really, really hard for more than half of my life to become good. But I'm not resistant to learning from people, and I'm certainly no better than you.”

Éponine feels dizzy. “I'm sorry,” she says, but it doesn't stop her head spinning, and it doesn't quiet the noise. “God, I'm – so sorry.”

Cosette softens. “It's all right.” She smiles again, briefly. “I'm sorry, too.”

 _No_ , thinks Éponine, because that isn't right, but – “You – you meant to, then? When you kissed me?”

“Yeah.” Cosette laughs a little, quick, embarrassed. “Horrible moment for it, obviously, and it was stupid and unprofessional and I've definitely been misreading... everything, but it was you.” She hesitates. “I hope I've not lost your trust completely. If you're uncomfortable with our scenes, I'll ask Combeferre to okay putting my cover in.”

It's too much. Éponine puts her face in her hands, breathless with a sob or a hysterical cry of laughter that won't come out. “Oh, God,” she says into her fingers. “God, I'm so sorry. I've made such a mess of this.”

“I think five sorrys just about cover it,” says Cosette gently. “And I'd like some credit for the mess, please.”

“You can't have it. You didn't misread.” Éponine lowers her hands. “I'm so stupid, I thought you couldn't possibly mean it. It didn't even occur to me that you might. That was unfair to you, I know, but I just – I didn't understand.” _I still don't_ , she doesn't say. That feeling has done enough damage to last a good long while.

“Oh,” says Cosette. After a pause, “For the record, I didn't mean to kiss Cesario, but I do think he's distractingly hot.”

Éponine bursts out laughing, and then she's in Cosette's arms and holding on to her shoulders and breathing her in. It feels like something overdue – their characters are never given a reprieve as simple as an embrace – and whatever's been brimming inside her spills over, warming her all the way to her fingertips.

“If I'd known,” says Cosette, shaking her head against Éponine's shoulder. “God, if I'd known you were – intimidated, is that it? I just assumed you couldn't stand me. Three years, and I was so sure I annoyed you.”

“I'm sorry,” says Éponine, again, and she'll say it more, she thinks, because there's little else to say about her own stubborn lack of faith. “If that helps at all; I really, genuinely annoyed myself.”

“Shush,” Cosette says happily. She pulls away, letting a hand rest on Éponine's arm. “So – since I very much messed it up before.” Her hand presses lightly, and Éponine allows her to draw her close again, the smallest step forward. “May I try again?”

Éponine leans in, as herself. For a moment, the clamour dies down.

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to Anna & Manoshi for actually knowing things about Shakespeare, saying Olivia/Viola rights, & some much-needed hand-holding. 
> 
> Éponine's like "I've never met a gender in my life also let me obsessively study the facial structures of every man I see." I promise these prompts aren't all just going to be different versions of Éponine on some path to self-discovery. 
> 
> Stay safe everyone, & thank you for reading! <3


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